The Mingrelian Conspiracy Read Free

for the waiter.
    ‘I’ve been thinking. Maybe the best chance we’ve got is catching them at the start of the process. You know, after the first visit.’
    ‘After they’ve left their visiting card? It’s a bit late then, isn’t it? People might be even less inclined to talk.’
    ‘At least we’d have something to go on. Now, in fact, there was a place yesterday—’
    ‘Jesus!’ said Georgiades, scrambling up. ‘It’s Rosa!’
    A very young, thin slip of a girl was standing beside them, arms akimbo, eyes blazing.
    ‘I thought you were supposed to be meeting me?’
    She gestured towards a pile of packages on the pavement.
    ‘On my way! I was on my way!’
    ‘You were sitting here. He spends all his time these days,’ she said to Owen, ‘sitting in cafés.’
    ‘I was working!’ protested Georgiades.
    ‘In a café? Since when is sitting in a café work?’
    ‘It’s what all the bosses do,’ said Georgiades. ‘As soon as they get anywhere, that’s what they do. Sit down in a café all day.’
    ‘Yes, but you haven’t got anywhere yet.’
    ‘I’m anticipating,’ said Georgiades.
    Owen felt the need to intervene on his behalf.
    ‘It’s my fault, really,’ he said. ‘I caught his eye—’
    ‘He was going to sit down anyway,’ said Rosa. ‘Before he saw you. I was watching.’
    ‘You were watching?’ said Georgiades. He turned to Owen. ‘Hey, she ought to be in this business, not me!’
    ‘Why don’t you join us?’ suggested Owen. ‘You must be tired after carrying all that lot. Tell you what, you sit down and have a cup of coffee, and I’ll pay for an arabeah to take you home.’
    ‘Well—’ said Rosa, weakening.
    But only for a moment.
    ‘Take us both home,’ she stipulated. ‘I don’t want to carry all these damned packages up the stairs. Besides,’ she said generously, ‘he’ll be tired after all this work he’s been doing.’
    Owen held a chair for her. Rosa sat down, pleased. She had a soft spot for Owen. In fact, she told herself, she might well have decided to marry him, not Georgiades, at the time of the wretched business of her father’s kidnapping, had she not known about him and Zeinab. Rosa stood rather in awe of Zeinab, not because she was a great lady, the daughter of a Pasha, no less, but because she had somehow solved, or seemed to have solved, the problem of being an independent woman in a man’s world. She took Zeinab secretly as her model. Zeinab, for instance, would have made no bones about sitting down in this café, populated as it was entirely by men. Rosa sat and lifted her chin.
    She could only, Owen thought, be about sixteen even now. She had married Georgiades (and this was exactly the way to put it, since he had not had much say in the matter) when she was only fourteen. Rosa had sworn blind that she was fifteen, although her parents had been equally convinced that she was fourteen. Fourteen was, in any case, quite allowable in Cairo and Rosa had received unexpected support from her grandmother, who was a little vague about when she herself had married but thought it was young and thoroughly approved Rosa’s following tradition. This was exactly what Rosa had no intention of following. Her grandmother would certainly not have approved of her sitting here; which made it, of course, all the more enjoyable.
    ‘He really is working, you know, when he’s in these cafés,’ said Owen, determined to do his best for Georgiades.
    Rosa nodded, and then thought. She was as sharp as a knife, an implement which she had threatened to use on Georgiades if she caught him straying, and it didn’t take her long to work out that two and two make four.
    ‘It’s protection, is it?’ she said. ‘The cafés?’
    Rosa knew all about the protection racket. Her family had a business. They dealt in such things as lacquered boxes, old jewellery, Assiut shawls and ancient Persian amulets. One day the gangs had called.
    ‘You’re going about it the wrong way,’